Traditional Public Administration and New Public Management Memorandum You are required to write a brief memorandum explaining and contrasting the roles of

Traditional Public Administration and New Public Management Memorandum You are required to write a brief memorandum explaining and contrasting the roles of government, citizens, businesses, and nonprofits in traditional public administration with the roles of those same entities in the context of the New Public Management. You must include an evaluation in light of biblical principles. This is a graduate-level research assignment designed to test your ability to conduct effective research, gain a nuanced understanding of complex concepts, synthesize the ideas reflected in your research with those reflected in your textbook readings, and to evaluate and apply these ideas to an issue of political economics. As with all graduate-level assignments, you are expected to comport yourself with the highest writing, research, and ethical standards. To do well on this assignment, you must conduct high-quality research and offer a rich, well-supported analysis; mere opinion or conjecture will not suffice. You must avoid careless or simple grammatical errors such as misspellings, incomplete sentences, comma splices, faulty noun/verb agreement, etc. Such errors will result in substantial point deductions. Plagiarism in any form is strictly prohibited and may result in failure of the assignment, failure of the course, and/or removal from the program. It is your responsibility to ensure that you fully understand what constitutes the various forms of plagiarism and to avoid all forms of plagiarism. The memorandum should be 3 (not including title page, reference page, and any appendices). This paper must be in current APA format with 1-inch margins, 12-pt Times New Roman font, and must include a title page and reference page. You must include citations to at least 2 scholarly sources (in addition to the course textbooks, assigned readings, and the Bible) to fully support your assertions and conclusions. 1
MEMORANDUM
TO:
PADM 620 Students
FROM:
PADM 620 Faculty,
Helms School of Government
SUBJECT:
The Administrative Memorandum
DATE:
November 1, 2017
Good writing skills are essential to a successful career in public administration, law, or
public policy. Learning to write well is a life-long process, and while no single exercise, class or
project can transform you into a good writer, it is important to understand that writing is a skill
that one can master. Understanding the purpose of a given document, the audience’s needs, and
the generally acceptable format and best practices in a particular field are all necessary to
effective communications. Writing for public administration often involves drafting documents
such as budget narratives, public policy proposals, annual reports, press releases and a variety of
memoranda. The administrative memorandum is a ubiquitous and important part of public
administration practice. Dennis L. Dresang, author of The Public Administration Workbook
commented on the importance of the administrative memorandum and provided a good
introduction to the drafting of administrative memoranda by identifying what he called the
“ABCs of good administrative writing: accuracy, brevity, and clarity.”1
1
Dennis Dresang, The Public Administration Workbook. 7th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016), 70.
2
Administrative Memoranda Must Be Accurate
In practice, Public Administration is a detail-oriented, fact-specific field. When drafting
an administrative memorandum it is very important to exhibit accuracy in both content and form.
According to Dennis Dresang:
Good writing is accurate writing. This is true in two senses. First, the statements that you
make in your writing – the facts on which you rely – should be true. If you are writing a
report for the county office of social services and you note that last year its social workers
had an average caseload of 75 clients each, make sure this is a correct figure. Everyone
makes mistakes occasionally; good writers minimize them. Nothing causes the credibility
of an administrator to plummet as quickly as a reputation for error.
Accuracy is important in a second sense as well: Your spelling, punctuation, and
grammar all should be correct. There is an old saying: “You can’t expect anyone to take
your writing more seriously than you appear to take yourself.” If you draft a memo or
prepare a report that is sloppy, filled with run-on sentences or misspelled words, you
clearly have not taken your writing seriously. Others will treat it accordingly.
This rule is not hard to follow. One clearly does not need to have “natural writing talent”
to be careful in the use of facts or to use a dictionary.2
Administrative Memoranda Should be Brief
The modern practice of public administration often involves heavy schedules, tight time
constraints, and long lists of complex problems. As such, concise writing is extremely valuable
in all forms of public administration communications and particularly in the crafting of
administrative memoranda. While these documents should be detailed, complete, and
substantive, they should also be as efficient as possible. According to Dennis Dresang:
The best administrative writing is short and to the point. Administrators are busy people.
So are all the legislators, contractors, customers, and others with whom they interact.
Almost no one has the time or patience to wade through a memo that runs on like a Norse
saga. In many offices, the rule is that if a document is longer than three or four pages, it
2
Dresang, 70-71.
3
must have an “executive summary” attached to the front for interested parties to scan
quickly. You need to exercise judgment in following this rule of brevity, of course. If
your assignment is to write an evaluation of the major agency program, you likely will
need to say more than “this program has failed to meet its objectives.”3
Learning to exercise good judgment and balance the necessity of specific, accurate, detailed
information and the competing need to package that information in the briefest, most efficient
way that is reasonable for the circumstances is key to crafting useful, high-quality administrative
memoranda.
Administrative Memoranda Must be Clear
Finally, clarity is vitally important to the crafting of high-quality administrative
memoranda. Clarity includes proficient use of language, the effective structuring of sentences
and paragraphs, and logical organization of ideas. In the words of Dennis Dresang:
Good writing is clear writing. It is writing that takes the work – and the guesswork – out
of reading. When you write clearly, your audience knows exactly what you mean, and
that should be your primary goal.
To keep it clear, keep it simple. Too many people knit their words together as if they
were weaving an oriental carpet, producing awesomely intricate and ornamented patterns
of prose. Even if you think your readers enjoyed diagramming sentences in tenth-grade
English (a doubtful proposition, by the way), don’t construct your sentences as if they
were puzzles to be solved. For those who aspire to clear writing, there is no better friend
than the simple declarative sentence, arranged in subject–verb–object form (e.g., “The
Department of Transportation [subject] awarded [verb] 300 contracts [object]”).
Avoid unnecessary jargon and fancy words. Although you may be justly proud that you
have mastered the foreign language of your profession (Pentagon-speak, legalese,
accountingish, or whatever), don’t assume that all your readers are equally adept. The
great essayist E.B. White wrote more than 40 years ago, “do not be tempted by a $20
word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.”
3
Dresang, 71.
4
Clarity does not come cheap. In fact, there is an inverse relationship between the ease of
reading and the ease of writing. As Hemingway put it, “Easy writing makes hard
reading.” Thus, it is a good guess that the crisper and cleaner the sentence, the longer it
took to write. The key is to rewrite, and then rewrite some more.4
4
Dresang, 71.
5
Bibliography
Dresang, Dennis. The Public Administration Workbook. 7th ed. New York: Routledge, 2016.
John M. Bryson
Barbara C. Crosby
Laura Bloomberg
University of Minnesota
Public Value Governance: Moving Beyond Traditional Public
Administration and the New Public Management
A new public administration movement is emerging to
move beyond traditional public administration and New
Public Management. The new movement is a response to
the challenges of a networked, multisector, no-one-whollyin-charge world and to the shortcomings of previous
public administration approaches. In the new approach,
values beyond e?ciency and e?ectiveness—and especially
democratic values—are prominent. Government has a
special role to play as a guarantor of public values, but
citizens as well as businesses and nonpro?t organizations
are also important as active public problem solvers. The
article highlights value-related issues in the new approach
and presents an agenda for research and action to be
pursued if the new approach is to ful?ll its promise.
C
reating public value is a hot topic for both
public administration practitioners and scholars (Van der Wal, Nabatchi, and de Graaf
2013; Williams and Shearer 2011). Why is that?
What is going on? We believe the answer lies with the
continuing evolution of public administration thinking and practice. Just as New Public Management
supplanted traditional public administration in
the 1980s and 1990s as the dominant view, a new
movement is now under way that is likely to eclipse
it. The new approach does not have a consensually
agreed name, but many authors point to the need for
a new approach and to aspects of its emergence in
practice and theory (e.g., Alford and Hughes 2008;
Boyte 2005; Bozeman 2007; Denhardt and Denhardt
2011; Fisher 2014; Kalambokidis 2014; Kettl 2008;
Moore 1995, 2013, 2014; Osborne 2010; Stoker
2006; Talbot 2010). For example, Janet and Robert
Denhardt’s excellent and widely cited book The New
Public Service (2011) captures much of the collaborative and democratic spirit, content, and governance
focus of the movement.
While e?ciency was the main concern of traditional
public administration, and e?ciency and e?ectiveness
are the main concerns of New Public Management,
values beyond e?ciency and e?ectiveness are pursued,
debated, challenged, and evaluated in the emerging
approach. In this regard, the emerging approach
reemphasizes and brings to the fore value-related
concerns of previous eras that were always present
but not dominant (Denhardt and Denhardt 2011;
Rosenbloom and McCurdy 2006). This renewed
attention to a broader array of values, especially to
values associated with democracy, makes it obvious
why questions related to the creation of public value,
public values more generally, and the public sphere
have risen to prominence. This article highlights some
of the key value-related issues in the new approach
and proposes an agenda for the future.
First, we outline what we believe are the main contours of the emerging approach. Next, we clarify the
meaning of value, public value, public values, and the
public sphere; discuss how they are operationalized;
and summarize important challenges to the concepts.
We then discuss how public value and public values
are used in practice. Finally, we present an agenda for
research and action to be pursued if the new approach
is to ful?ll its promise.1
An Emerging View of Public Administration
Public administration thinking and practice have
always responded to new challenges and the shortcomings of what came before (Kaufman 1969; Peters
and Pierre 1998). Table 1, which builds on a similar
table in Denhardt and Denhardt (2011, 28–29),
presents a summary of traditional public administration, the New Public Management, and the emerging approach. The new approach highlights four
important stances that together represent a response
to current challenges and old shortcomings. These
include an emphasis on public value and public
values, a recognition that government has a special
role as a guarantor of public values, a belief in the
importance of public management broadly conceived
and of service to and for the public, and a heightened
emphasis on citizenship and democratic and collaborative governance. These concerns, of course, are
not new to public administration, but their emerging
combination is the latest response to what Dwight
Symposium
Introduction
John M. Bryson is the McKnight
Presidential Professor of Planning and
Public Affairs in the Humphrey School of
Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
He wrote Strategic Planning for Public
and Nonprofit Organizations and cowrote, with Barbara C. Crosby, Leadership
for the Common Good. He received
the 2011 Dwight Waldo Award from the
American Society for Public Administration
for “outstanding contributions to the professional literature of public administration
over an extended scholarly career.”
E-mail: bryson001@umn.edu
Barbara C. Crosby associate professor
in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at
the University of Minnesota, has taught and
written extensively about leadership and
public policy. She is author of Leadership
for Global Citizenship and coauthor,
with John M. Bryson, of Leadership for
the Common Good. As former academic
codirector of the University of Minnesota’s
Center for Integrative Leadership, she
conducted training for senior managers of
nonprofit, business, and government organizations in the United States and abroad.
E-mail: crosb002@umn.edu
Laura Bloomberg is associate dean in
the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at
the University of Minnesota. Her teaching,
research, and publications focus on U.S.
education policy and administration,
cross-sector leadership, and program
evaluation. Previously, she was an urban
high school principal and executive director
of the University of Minnesota’s Center for
Integrative Leadership. She worked with
former U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton
to launch the global Women in Public
Service Project.
E-mail: bloom004@umn.edu
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 445–456. © 2014 by
The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12238.
This article has been updated with minor copy-editing changes after first online publication. 445
Table 1 Comparing Perspectives: Traditional Public Administration, New Public Management, and the Emerging Approach to Public Administration
Dimension
Traditional Public Administration
New Public Management
Emerging Approach to Public Administration (e.g.,
Denhardt and Denhardt’s [2011] New Public Service)
Broad Environmental and Intellectual Context
Material and ideological conditions
Industrialization, urbanization, rise of
modern corporation, specialization,
faith in science, belief in progress,
concern over major market failures,
experience with the Great Depression and World War II, high trust in
government
Concern with government failures,
distrust of big government,
belief in the efficacy and
efficiency of markets and
rationality, devolution and
devolution
Concern with market, government, nonprofit and civic
failures; concern with so-called wicked problems;
deepening inequality; hollowed or thinned state;
“downsized” citizenship; networked and collaborative
governance; advanced information and communication
technologies
Primary theoretical
and epistemological foundations
Political theory, scientific management,
naive social science, pragmatism
Economic theory, sophisticated
positivist social science
Democratic theory, public and nonprofit management
theory, plus diverse approaches to knowing
Prevailing view of
rationality and
model of human
behavior
Synoptic rationality, “administrative
man”
Technical and economic rationality,
“economic man,” self-interested
decision makers
Formal rationality, multiple tests of rationality (political,
administrative, economic, legal, ethical), belief in public
spiritedness beyond narrow self-interest, “reasonable person” open to influence through dialogue and
deliberation
The Public Sphere or Realm
Definition of the
common good,
public value, the
public interest
Determined by elected officials or
technical experts
Determined by elected officials or
by aggregating individual preferences supported by evidence of
consumer choice
What is public is seen as going far beyond government,
although government has a special role as a guarantor
of public values; common good determined by broadly
inclusive dialogue and deliberation informed by evidence and democratic and constitutional values
Role of politics
Elect governors, who determine policy
objectives
Elect governors, who determine
policy objectives; empowered
managers; administrative politics
around the use of specific tools
“Public work,” including determining policy objectives via
dialogue and deliberation; democracy as “a way of life”
Role of citizenship
Voter, client, constituent
Customer
Citizens seen as problem-solvers and co-creators actively
engaged in creating what is valued by the public and is
good for the public
Government and Public Administration
Role of government
agencies
Rowing, seen as designing and implementing policies and programs in response to politically defined objectives
Steering, seen as determining
objectives and catalyzing service
delivery through tool choice and
reliance if possible on markets,
businesses, and nonprofit
organizations
Government acts as convener, catalyst, collaborator;
sometimes steering, sometimes, rowing, sometimes
partnering, sometimes staying out of the way
Key objectives
Politically provided goals; implementation
managed by public servants; monitoring done through bureaucratic and
elected officials’ oversight
Politically provided goals;
managers manage inputs and
outputs in a way that ensures
economy and responsiveness to
consumers
Create public value in such a way that what the public
most cares about is addressed effectively and what is
good for the public is put in place
Key values
Efficiency
Efficiency and effectiveness
Efficiency, effectiveness, and the full range of democratic
and constitutional values
Mechanisms for
achieving policy
objectives
Administer programs through centralized, hierarchically organized public
agencies or self-regulating professions
Create mechanisms and incentive
structures to achieve policy
objectives especially through use
of markets
Selection from a menu of alternative delivery mechanisms
based on pragmatic criteria; this often means helping
build cross-sector collaborations and engaging citizens
to achieve agreed objectives
Role of public
manager
Ensures that rules and appropriate
procedures are followed; responsive
to elected officials, constituents, and
clients; limited discretion allowed to
administrative officials
Helps define and meet agreed
upon performance objectives;
responsive to elected officials
and customers; wide discretion
allowed
Plays an active role in helping create and guide networks
of deliberation and delivery and help maintain and
enhance the overall effectiveness, accountability, and
capacity of the system; responsive to elected officials,
citizens, and an array of other stakeholders; discretion is needed but is constrained by law, democratic
and constitutional values, and a broad approach to
accountability
Approach to
accountability
Hierarchical, in which administrators are
accountable to democratically elected
officials
Market driven, in which aggregated self-interests result in outcomes desired by broad groups
of citizens seen as customers
Multifaceted, as public servants must attend to law, community values, political norms, professional standards,
and citizen interests
Contribution to the
democratic process
Delivers politically determined objectives and accountability; competition
between elected leaders provides overarching accountability; public sector
has a monopoly on public service ethos
Delivers politically determined
objectives; managers determine
the means; skepticism regarding public service ethos; favors
customer service
Delivers dialogue and catalyzes and responds to active
citizenship in pursuit of what the public values and what
is good for the public; no one sector has a monopoly on
public service ethos; maintaining relationships based on
shared public values is essential
Sources: Adapted principally from Denhardt and Denhardt (2011, 28–29), with further adaptations from Stoker (2006, 44); Kelly, Mulgan, and Muers (2002);
and Boyte (2011).
446
Public Administration Review • July | August 2014
Waldo (1948) called the periodically changing “material and
ideological background.” Whether the new approach can live up to
its promise—and particularly its democratic promise—is an open
question that we explore later.
Traditional Public Administration
Traditional public administration (Stoker 2006; Waldo 1948)
arose in the United States in the late 1900s and matured by the
mid-twentieth century as a response to a particular set of conditions. These included the challenges of industrialization, urbanization, the rise of the modern corporation, faith in science, belief in
progress, and concern over major market failures. Mostly successful experience with government responses to World War I, the
Great Depression, and World War II helped solidify support for
traditional public administration and built strong trust in government as an agent for the good of all. In its idealized form, politics
and administration were quite separate (Wilson 1887). Goals were
determined in the ?rst instance by elected o?cials and only secondarily re?ned by technical experts in response to political direction.
Government agencies were the primary deliverers of public value
through the way they designed and implemented poli…
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